“Marriage has no guarantees.
If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.”
– Erma Bombeck –

Random thoughts about the power of connections.

On those times when we take chances, when we risk stepping outside of the comfort zone, an encouraging voice or smile can be the difference between moving forward or retreating. As one blogger put it, when we play on the “skinny branches of life”—we need support.

How often do we stop to remember the grace others have added to our lives? One author reminds us “that a grateful outlook produces emotional prosperity, whereas failing to live gratefully leads to emotional poverty.”

A neighbor who graciously accepted the invitation to review one section of my new book, shared an ageless quote:

No man is an island,
entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.
– John Dunne’s Meditation 17 –

Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us that “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.”

One Buddhists meditation technique, Naikan, guides us to ask three questions about our relationships:

What have I received from ________?

What have I given to ________?

What troubles and difficulty have I caused ________?

Relationships can be messy. Or as Erma Bombeck has said, “”Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.”

Video recommendation for the week.

Tenth Avenue North sings that there “ain’t no life outside each other…we are not meant to live this life alone.”

For information about and to order my book, Stories about Teaching, Learning, and Resilience: No Need to be an Island, clickhere. A few colleges and one state-wide agency have adopted it for training and coaching purposes. Contact me if you and your team are interested in doing the same.

The paperback price on Amazon is now $14.99 and the Kindle version stands at $5.99. Consider it for a faculty orientation or a mentoring program. The accompanying videos would serve to stimulate community-building conversations at the beginning of a meeting.